Five principal (but ten in total) conjoined and reassembled fragments from the central and lower part of a flat grave-cover with clear taper, decorated on its upper surface only with a mixture of incised and low relief ornament.

A (top): The decoration has no border definition. It is divided into two zones by a broad longitudinal band in slight relief presumably representing the shaft of a cross. To one side is a series of three small, crudely cut human figures. The uppermost (whose lower body has been lost) is placed head to head with the central figure, the lowermost in the same orientation as the central figure, and all three in a precise line. Their stance is closely similar: frontal, with both arms to the sides, and feet turned out right (central figure) and left (lowermost). The central figure appears to stand on an oval object, perhaps a stone or platform. All three have a deeply incised roll around their heads, and their facial details are indicated by crude incised lines whose execution makes it uncertain whether the apparent absence of details in individual cases (e.g. eyes in the uppermost figure in contrast to the drilled eyes of the central figure) is deliberate and significant. Faint incised lines may indicate that the central figure is holding an object in its right hand, and the lowermost may have the tip of a bladed weapon protruding from its left side. There is no indication of dress. To the right of the central shaft the field is filled with completely degenerated spiral-scroll or vermiculation.

B and D (long): Undecorated.

C and E (ends) and F (bottom): Broken.

This unusual cover is difficult to parallel satisfactorily either in detail or in overall conception. The difficulty arises in part from its incomplete and damaged survival, in part from the nature of its decorative scheme, and in part from its crudeness of execution. It is not even certain from what survives that the scheme was organised around a principal cross motif, and Stocker (1986a, 64) declined to make that assumption. Nevertheless the breadth and low relief of the central longitudinal shaft, which does appear to have extended to the foot of the cover, are common to a large local group of flat covers. Typically in that group the cross-head is squared, of type A1. Whereas commonly such covers locally achieve a level of symmetry in their decoration, in this case a row of human figures is balanced with sloppily carved, meaningless vermiculation, perhaps most analogous to the degenerate spiral-scroll of Cumbrian monuments such as Addingham 1, Dearham 2, St Bees 2 (Bailey and Cramp 1988, ills. 1–4, 256, 551) or, as pointed out by Stocker (1986a, 59), to knotwork on shafts at Bothal, Northumberland (Cramp 1984, pl. 159, 822 and 827). Locally, similar space-filling 'spaghetti' is found on the cross-shaft at Stoke Rochford (Ill. 346), in that case with a mix of motifs favouring a late date.

The human figures are a rarity on flat grave-covers, though they occur in the crowded pictorial scenes of covers of hogback type (Lang 1984) and on a flat cover from the York Minster graveyard (Lang 1991, 71–2, ills. 145–7). A single crude figure in shallow relief is found on the cover from Cross Canonby, Cumberland, balanced by incised chevrons in the field below the cross-arms (Kendrick 1949, 67, pl. XLVc; Bailey and Cramp 1988, 89, ills. 222–3): it, too, is tapered but is by comparison a distinctly smaller monument. It represents a late development in that area and is probably of eleventh-century date. A similar single figure, arms akimbo, occurs on the roof of a hogback at Heysham, Lancashire (Collingwood 1927, fig. 207; Lang 1984, 138–9). But none of these offers a parallel to the number of figures and their organisation on the St Mark's piece. Here, if there was a cross-arm, the number of figures was probably limited to the surviving three. The crudeness of carving makes fine iconographic analysis doubtful; it is far from certain, for example, whether either of the lower figures actually carries a tool or weapon; the 'knife' of the central figure in particular might easily be casual or secondary scratches and the 'sword' of the lower figure appears to continue the lines of incisions or surface cracks running across the body. The most consistently distinctive aspect of the figures is the prominent roll or band around the heads, most straightforwardly understood as a halo (Stocker 1986a, 59). Stocker has drawn the general parallel with tiers of figures on ninth- and tenth-century cross-shafts, and certainly on some Crucifixion panels, as at Alnmouth, Northumberland (Cramp 1984, pl. 156, 808) or Romsey, Hampshire (Coatsworth 1988, pl. Ia), a row of figures, one above the other, appear below the cross-arms. But they relate actively and directly to the cross and Crucifixion in a way that the figures here do not. An iconographically purposeful trio would be St John Baptist, Christ and St John Evangelist, but though the central figure has been afforded prominence by its bolder modelling and by the platform on which it stands, there are no other details giving guidance towards interpretation, nor does it offer any comment on the topmost reversed figure. Furthermore, the prevalence of secular figures and scenes on Viking Age funerary monuments has been the subject of recent scholarly emphasis (Bailey 1980b, 80–184; Cramp 1982; Margeson 1983), and an elaborately Christian iconographic scheme would be surprising on a grave-cover of this quality. Here, rather, the figures are inactive and doll-like, their arms loose to their sides, like the figure on the Anglo-Scandinavian shaft at Kirklevington, for example, or that on the 'warrior cross' at Middleton, both Yorkshire (Bailey 1980b, pls. 14 and 57). Perhaps this, too, is a secular portrait – the central figure representing the man in life, standing active on a rock/the ground like a figure in a manuscript drawing. The other figures might then be scenes from his life (? and death – in the reversed image above). It might alternatively be a narrative scene, whose distinctive allusion is lost. Either would entail taking the prominent roll around the heads as hair rather than halo, contra Stocker.

No conviction in interpretation seems possible. The markedly tapering form of the cover may indicate a later rather than earlier date. Despite the far-flung and generally Norse focus of comparisons, the cover's petrology and crude production confirm that it is a local Lincoln product.